4 ms·

If I had a pound for every story about "School X buying Y thousand Ubuntu computers"... I'd have about £19. But seriously it's nice to see some governments wan

If I had a pound for every story about "School X buying Y thousand Ubuntu computers"... I'd have about £19. But seriously it's nice to see some governments want to break their dependency on Microsoft.

calinet6 14y ago
Dependency on anyone, really. Good for the governments sure, but even better for the kids. It almost doesn't matter—they don't need anything but a browser these days.
- oliwarner 14y ago
  > they don't need anything but a browser these days Sure, assuming you only want the next generation of young adults to be able to look things up on Google and use Facebook. When my school tried to teach me how to use MS Word (I was 13) I laughed. I already knew everything there was to know about it. Of course none of this was innate, nor did I know it just because I was young. Eight years earlier when I was having my first play with computers (much to their detriment) and I would play, yes play with word processors. I didn't have anything to write but I learned WordPerfect. I learned MS Word. Hell, I learned most of MS Office and several versions in-between my first encounter and my Year 9 ICT training. The newest generation is growing up on touch devices. It's great for the arts, I suspect but it's the end of kids who'll just load up a Word processor just to see how it works. They'll need to be taught.
  - calinet6 14y ago
    Ahem. Google Docs? MS Office Web Apps? Etc? There's quite literally an app or site for almost everything on the internet. It's great that you think your curiosity and drive for knowledge is somehow unique in this world, but I suspect you're wrong and just have a damn-kids-get-off-my-lawn mentality. The web has only made knowledge and possibility more accessible, not less, and it's naïve to think that it's a dumbed-down version of the "incredible software" you grew up using.
    - fmoralesc 14y ago
      Can you script google docs? That's how I "played with my word processor" when I was a kid (I was a bookish kid and read every manual in my computer; turns out many were about VB scripting and the Windows API... I was intrigued). I suspect many more did. If people had access only to web apps, they couldn't have those kind of experiences; I think that's what the parent commenter points to. Now, I don't actually think these kind of things are becoming extinct, or anything like that: it's easier in many ways nowadays. But the web by itself still has some way to go to fully provide them, also because it is so huge. I've started to rant, so I'll end here.
      - icebraining 14y ago
        Can you script google docs? Yes: https://developers.google.com/apps-script/overview https://developers.google.com/apps-script/overview By the way, I started programming in '99, and since I didn't have a computer at the time, I learned JavaScript, since I could run it on IE4 on public machines. So yes, a browser (and, I guess, Notepad) is really all you need! Besides, since then and between PHP/Python/etc shared hosting and tools like Codeanywhere (which can talk to S/FTP servers), a web browser is enough for building web applications. (Of course, the web is far from reaching the potential of desktop development, of course. But it has come a long way already)
        fmoralesc 14y ago
        > Yes. Neat! I eat my thoughts (It's the kind of thing I miss by using vim for almost everything). EDIT: But it is a separate app...
        icebraining 14y ago
        Not exactly: "The script editor can be accessed directly at http://script.google.com http://script.google.com, or by launching it from one of the Google products which support built-in access to the script editor, such as Google Spreadsheets and Google Sites." In Spreadsheets, you just need to go to Tools → Scripts → Script Editor.
icebraining 14y ago
This is not new, though. What they're installing is not pure Ubuntu, but Guadalinex, which is a distro created by the Andalusian government in 2003, and which apparently moved from a Debian to an Ubuntu base since then.

calinet6 14y ago

Dependency on anyone, really. Good for the governments sure, but even better for the kids. It almost doesn't matter—they don't need anything but a browser these days.

oliwarner 14y ago
> they don't need anything but a browser these days Sure, assuming you only want the next generation of young adults to be able to look things up on Google and use Facebook. When my school tried to teach me how to use MS Word (I was 13) I laughed. I already knew everything there was to know about it. Of course none of this was innate, nor did I know it just because I was young. Eight years earlier when I was having my first play with computers (much to their detriment) and I would play, yes play with word processors. I didn't have anything to write but I learned WordPerfect. I learned MS Word. Hell, I learned most of MS Office and several versions in-between my first encounter and my Year 9 ICT training. The newest generation is growing up on touch devices. It's great for the arts, I suspect but it's the end of kids who'll just load up a Word processor just to see how it works. They'll need to be taught.
- calinet6 14y ago
  Ahem. Google Docs? MS Office Web Apps? Etc? There's quite literally an app or site for almost everything on the internet. It's great that you think your curiosity and drive for knowledge is somehow unique in this world, but I suspect you're wrong and just have a damn-kids-get-off-my-lawn mentality. The web has only made knowledge and possibility more accessible, not less, and it's naïve to think that it's a dumbed-down version of the "incredible software" you grew up using.
  - fmoralesc 14y ago
    Can you script google docs? That's how I "played with my word processor" when I was a kid (I was a bookish kid and read every manual in my computer; turns out many were about VB scripting and the Windows API... I was intrigued). I suspect many more did. If people had access only to web apps, they couldn't have those kind of experiences; I think that's what the parent commenter points to. Now, I don't actually think these kind of things are becoming extinct, or anything like that: it's easier in many ways nowadays. But the web by itself still has some way to go to fully provide them, also because it is so huge. I've started to rant, so I'll end here.
    - icebraining 14y ago
      Can you script google docs? Yes: https://developers.google.com/apps-script/overview https://developers.google.com/apps-script/overview By the way, I started programming in '99, and since I didn't have a computer at the time, I learned JavaScript, since I could run it on IE4 on public machines. So yes, a browser (and, I guess, Notepad) is really all you need! Besides, since then and between PHP/Python/etc shared hosting and tools like Codeanywhere (which can talk to S/FTP servers), a web browser is enough for building web applications. (Of course, the web is far from reaching the potential of desktop development, of course. But it has come a long way already)
      - fmoralesc 14y ago
        > Yes. Neat! I eat my thoughts (It's the kind of thing I miss by using vim for almost everything). EDIT: But it is a separate app...
        icebraining 14y ago
        Not exactly: "The script editor can be accessed directly at http://script.google.com http://script.google.com, or by launching it from one of the Google products which support built-in access to the script editor, such as Google Spreadsheets and Google Sites." In Spreadsheets, you just need to go to Tools → Scripts → Script Editor.

icebraining 14y ago

This is not new, though. What they're installing is not pure Ubuntu, but Guadalinex, which is a distro created by the Andalusian government in 2003, and which apparently moved from a Debian to an Ubuntu base since then.